Many electrical components such as passive or active circuit or electronic devices are tested for electrical and optical properties during manufacturing by automated test systems. Typical automatic sorting apparatuses use precision electrical or optical properties of a device and either accept, reject, or sort it into an output category depending on the measured values. For miniature devices, automatic sorting apparatuses are often designed to handle, bulk loads, where the manufacturing process creates a volume of devices that have substantially identical mechanical characteristics such as size and shape but differ in electrical or optical properties that generally fall within a range and rely on testing to sort the components into sort bins containing other components with similar characteristics.
Electronic components are handled by a wide variety of different electronic component handlers. These different handlers include but are not limited to products sold by Electro Scientific Industries Inc. of Portland, Oreg., the assignee of the present patent application. Electro Scientific Industries sells a variety of electronic component handlers including, but not limited to, a high volume MLCC tester sold as the model No. 3300, a chip array tester sold as the model No. 3400, a visual test system sold as the model No. 6650, and a chip array terminator sold as the model No. 753. One such electronic component-testing machine is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,842,579 entitled Electrical Circuit Component Handler.